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September 2, 2010 |
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| June 24, 2009 |
By: Terry Sheridan |
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ow that Florida Hometown Democracy has been ensured a place on the 2010 ballot, South Florida attorneys and planners predict approval of the measure will bring a cornucopia of development ills –– from lower property values to a delayed economic recovery.
But Hometown Democracy co-founder Lesley Blackner in Palm Beach said overdevelopment exacerbated the recession in Florida. She says opponents are exaggerating the measure’s impact.
The proposal seeks to give residents a vote in local comprehensive plan changes. Comp plans, as they’re called, are blueprints for development. They outline how land should be used, where roads should be built and what kinds of additional infrastructure is needed to support new projects. Property owners who want to change their land use from commercial to residential, for example, must first obtain a comp plan amendment approval.
For more than five years, Blackner and other FHD proponents have pushed to give citizens a stronger voice in development changes. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court cleared the way for the measure to be placed on the 2010 ballot by revoking a law that would have let voters remove their signatures from citizen initiative petitions.
Then on Monday, Secretary of State Kurt Browning declared the proposal’s 698,562 signatures were more than enough to earn a position on the 2010 ballot.
Designated Amendment 4, the proposal needs 60 percent of voters’ approval.
“The war is on,” said Gary Rogers, president of the Florida Redevelopment Association and executive director of the Lauderdale Lakes Community Redevelopment Association.
“The topic is so complicated for the average layperson to deal with –– laws, economic impacts, land values, job creation –– that all the flashy slogans will threaten to carry the day, and that’s what disturbs me.”
Residents were invited to participate two years ago in a community-planning effort, called a charette, for the city’s mixed-use Bella Vista town center project on Oakland Park Boulevard just east of State Road 7. The charette cost the city $80,000, but helped create a project plan that reflected citizens’ comments, he said.
An additional vote by residents would cost the city tens of thousands more, Rogers said.
Former Broward County attorney Susan Delegal said a citizens’ vote on every proposed land use change will spawn enough influence-peddling and myopic decision-making to push developers out of Florida.
“Just as developers’ lobbyists have been criticized, there will be citizens’ lobbyists who do the same thing,” said Delegal of Billing Cochran Lyles Mauro & Anderson in Fort Lauderdale.
Prolonged planning would increase the carrying costs of property and could ultimately decrease its value, she said.
“You’ll see developers reorient themselves, especially now with everyone reassessing their lives and businesses. They’ll re-analyze how they’ll come out of this recession, paring down staffs and reorienting focus, and they’ll be thinking, ‘Where is it I want to put my capital?’ Delegal said. “Will they put it in a place like Florida, with all this to deal with? Or go to another state?”
In Miami, attorney Jeffrey Bercow of Bercow Radell & Fernandez said the FHD petition is worded so broadly that it would paralyze local governments.
Bercow, who represents the developers of the 7,000-home Parkland project outside of the Miami-Dade urban development boundary, declined to discuss the impact FHD would have on the project.
“I think there will be initially so much litigation over this amendment and what it means that any out-of-state developer will flee from Florida and look for sunnier and more welcome climates,” he said.”
Several attorneys and planners conjectured that there will be efforts to derail the amendment if it passes.
They aren’t certain how, but the talk already is there –– including ways to avoid comp plans.
“I’m sure there are games people can try to play,” said attorney Joe Goldstein of Holland & Knight in Miami, a former urban planner. “Attorneys can come up with all kinds of things. But anyone who thinks you can just blithely get rid of comp plans and call it a master plan instead to avoid the citizens’ vote, that’s happy horseplay.”
People can conceptualize all they want, but the political will will defer “to some reasonable extent to the will of the people voting on a constitutional amendment,” Goldstein said.
Blackner said FHD co-founders and proponents already have considered the possibility that the amendment would be derailed if it passes.
“These growth plans are mandated by state law,” she said. “As long as they are on the books, you can’t undo them. The process of comprehensive planning is mandated in the Florida Constitution and our amendment says you shall not change a plan without voters’ approval. So how could comp plans be repealed? Why are [critics] being so crazy?”
In Broward County, the amendment could be particularly thorny, said Henry Sniezek, executive director of the Broward County Planning Council that reviews and votes on local governments’ comp plan changes before sending them to county commissioners.
Broward and Pinellas County are the only two counties in the state whose charters give them land-use control over cities.
“This has to be sorted out, but it’ll likely mean some system of notification to residents countywide,” he said.
Sniezek has directed his staff to assume the measure will pass, and plan accordingly.
“I’ve told them to become experts on what this means, so we’re ready on Day 1 to deal with it.”
Reporting from The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Terry Sheridan can be reached at (954) 468-2614.
Gary Rogers photo by Melanie Bell
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